


a very peculiar game of fetch

by blindbatalex



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Boston Bruins, Dog fic, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, Please Love me, i came here to atone for the heartbreak, i unleashed onto the world last week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 20:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18213149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: When, Bergy asks Brad to dog sit while the team is on a roadie, Brad doesn't need much convincing to say yes. And really what can go wrong staying over at your linemate-slash-bff-slash crush's house all by yourself?In which, Wilson is a dog on a mission, Bergy has secrets that areslightlycreepy, and Brad wonders whether he dares to hope.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eafay70](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eafay70/gifts).



“Okay that is _not_ how you play fetch,” Brad said, standing at the door to Bergy’s closet. 

Bergy convinced him to dog sit for Wilson while the team was on a roadtrip and Brad was staying back home with an injury. There was actually not that much convincing involved per se; Bergy mostly just asked ‘hey do you mind looking after Wilson while I’m gone, he likes you more than his regular dog sitter’ and as was the case with 90% of the questions Bergy asked him, Brad said ‘yes of course’ without missing a single beat.

Except, as it turned out, Wilson had some very peculiar ideas about how fetch worked.

He dropped the ball to bark once now, standing his ground square in the middle of the closet, asking Brad to hurry up and get his ass over here. At which point of course, he was going to take the ball and run off to some other place in the house and raise hell to make sure Brad followed after him.

Really, this was no way to rest an injured ankle.

More importantly, he was pretty sure when Bergy asked him to stay in his house to look after his house he didn’t mean it as blanket permission to investigate every corner of the place, and especially you know, his closet.

But Wilson was not to be deterred. Putting on his best puppy face, he whined, threatening to tell his father tales of the awful mistreatment he received at Brad’s hands the moment Bergy was back.

Brad imagined Bergy’s face, the disappointment in his eyes as Wilson huddled close to him and said _j’accuse!_ with wide betrayed eyes, pointing a paw at Brad.

He grit his teeth. That would not do.

“You win,” he said as he walked into the closet. “You better run fast or I’m gonna come and get you!”

But Wilson, that pesky hellhound masquerading as a Maltese Poodle mix, took this as an opportunity to surprise Brad once more, picked up his ball and threw it deep into one of the lower shelves. 

“Oh give me a break,” Brad said.

Satisfied with his throw, Wilson merely barked happily in response.

Brad crouched in front of the shelf to retrieve the ball.

Maybe this was fetch after all. 

Just. 

In reverse. 

President Obama had called him a little ball of hate but he was getting beat in a battle of wits by a dog. And not a large dog at that either.

The ball had landed on a neatly folded pile of clothes. It was covered in spit which meant the hoodie it was lying on now also had dog saliva on it, which--God, dog sitting was a lot more difficult than Brad imagined. 

He ran a hand over the garment to inspect how bad the damage was and then he frowned at how familiar the texture was. 

Huh.

But that made no sense.

Mostly to convince himself that he was making up things, Brad took the hoodie out.

And then he stopped. He blinked, once, twice, pinched himself, looked at the tag. 

None of those things changed what he was seeing. 

That was Brad’s hoodie. Not only that, but it was his favorite hoodie, a soft gray Bruins one that was half a size too large for him and always made him feel warm and safe whenever he put it on. He had whined and complained for a week when he lost it, even offered a get-out-of-a-chirp free card to the teammate or member of staff who would give him a lead on its whereabouts, but to no avail.

And it was...somehow tucked away into an obscure corner of Bergy’s closet all this time? Bergy had smiled and sympathized with his plight back then, but said nothing. What plausible explanation could there even exist for how it made its way all the way here?

He was still pondering this mystery when his eye caught the garment that was previously right below the hoodie on the shelf and was now exposed to sight.

A Bruins home jersey, the 63 peeking out mischievously on the arm. 

Brad recognized it the moment he picked it up. The autograph in scrawny letters on the spoked B was unmistakable. What must have been a year ago he had made this bet with Bergy, but mostly with himself, said he would give Bergy his game worn jersey if Bergy scored a hat trick. Bergy, being Bergy, proceeded to do just that in the next game and Brad made a big deal of presenting him with his reward, knowing of course that it was bullshit. There was literally no reason Bergy or anyone on the team would care for his jersey. He knew it was Bergy’s good nature and kind heart that made him smile as he accepted the gift, thought it must have ended up in the hands of some charity or a fan a long time ago.

And yet here it was, folded neatly and tucked under Brad’s favorite and previously missing hoodie.

Still half convinced he was in a fever dream, he crouched back down and dug further. Under the jersey was a t-shirt, a t-shirt he’d forgotten ever existed but his nonetheless, and under that yet another one, all his.

Then he blinked, once, twice, pinched himself, knocked on his head.

None of those things changed what he was seeing. Hard as it was to believe, Bergy literally had a small tower made of Brad’s missing clothes.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked Wilson, who was taking in the scene with calculated disinterest.

Wilson shook his head as if to say _isn’t it obvious?_

“Oh come on!” Brad replied with disbelief. 

It wasn’t obvious at all. Sure, _he_ liked Bergy, and sure Bergy liked spending time with him, laughed and smiled twice as much when he was in Brad’s company than any other time, but that didn’t mean anything. It meant they were friends. Besides Brad was about as subtle as a freight train and as he had told himself on multiple occasions, surely Bergy picked up on it by now and if he had liked Brad back, surely he would have said or done something. Surely there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what his clothes were doing here. There had to be.

Right?


	2. Chapter 2

The rest of the day was uneventful. Though, Brad thought, pretty much anything would count as uneventful in comparison to finding a stack of your clothes in your best friend’s house.

He worked out at Bergy’s home gym, fixed a simple dinner for himself, and watched the game with Wilson snuggled up to his side on the couch, all the while thinking--

But no matter how much he thought it didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did rather, but hope was such a dangerous, scary thing. He’d spent so long dreaming--but he always knew that’s what it was. An impossible daydream and nothing else. He liked Bergy and Bergy was straight for all intents and purposes and they played in the NHL--cared for hockey more than anything else in the world ever since they were knee high. Hockey players didn’t date men and they most certainly didn’t date each other. And surely there was a plausible explanation, some way for why and how his clothes ended up where they did, that when spelled out would make perfect sense. There had to be.

*

He almost asked Bergy when they video called that night.

Bergy looked tired in the small screen of his phone, as he often did after a hard fought game, but his face melted when he saw--Wilson, presumably.

“There are my two boys!” he cooed with delight, as one often does when one is talking to a dog. Brad assumed, taken in that context, the plural on the ‘boys’ did not carry much significance. Wilson perked up at the voice, looking around the room for his dad, whined when he couldn’t locate where Bergy was.

Bergy was grinning and his eyes were soft and he looked absolutely gorgeous.

(That is, he always looked gorgeous of course, but now, more so than his usual.)

When he said ‘who’s a good boy!’ Brad had to try very hard to clamp down on what felt suspiciously like jealousy and a burning desire to reply ‘I am!’

And so he didn’t ask.

*

He was still thinking as he brushed his teeth. It almost felt like a physical injury, like he took a puck to the chest and it broke something fundamental in there and so now it hurt every time he took in a breath.

It made him vaguely nauseous as he climbed under the covers in the guest room.

Well, nauseous and also vaguely empty, like he misplaced something very important.

He pondered it for a moment and then a soft whine carried through from the half open door.

Fuck.

He knew what was missing. Wilson.

With a swear and a grunt Brad kicked off the covers and got up. Before he left Bergy told him Wilson loved to snuggle at night and wouldn’t sleep unless he had his human right next to him to keep him warm and safe.

“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?” Brad had asked, but really the little hellhound could hardly keep a tennis ball safe let alone a human or a house. He was as useless as they came for a dog.

“Wilson, come on, where are you,” Brad called as he made his way into the hallway. He was way too tired for this and Bergy’s house too big to search it inch by inch for a teeny tiny dog.

Wilson whined again and the sound was coming from--

Standing at the door of Bergy’s bedroom (which he could swear he closed) Brad sighed. There Wilson was, curled up on Bergy’s bed in a forlorn ball and there Brad was, at the threshold of yet another room he had no business being in.

“Come on boy, come here,” Brad called. 

“Woof _woof_ ,” Wilson responded defiantly without moving an inch.

Brad narrowed his eyes. People said dogs took after their owners. This little devil, Brad came to find, had nothing to do with his sweet and mild-mannered Bergy. He was as stubborn as a goat and loud as a church bell and he was driving Brad mad.

But in this instance Brad possessed a considerable advantage that Wilson did not.

Namely he could march in, and scoop the little bastard in his arms and carry him back to the guest room so that they could both get some sleep.

Well. 

In theory. 

As soon as Brad put Wilson down on the correct bed, the little critter jumped back down, and wagging his tail trotted right out of the bedroom.

He gave Brad one bark from the hallway to celebrate his achievement.

So be it, Brad thought. He got back into the bed and pulled the comforter over himself. To hell if he cared whether the dog wanted to sleep in his room or not. It was a free country.

He set up for a nice daydream scenario to help himself fall asleep--he sometimes went for ones where he and Bergy were dating, a nice vacation on a beach where they laughed over ice cream and got sunburnt, but this time he stuck to something safer. A hunting trip in the summer with his dad and brother, the only sound they could hear the singing of the birds and the soft fall of their boots, the scent of pinewood--

A loud whine interrupted his thoughts. Brad steadfastly chose to ignore it.

Where was he, yes--the scent of pinewood in the crisp air, the forest alive around--

Woof!

_Woof woof woof!!!_

It was a pitiful painful sort of bark too as if the poor puppy was getting eaten alive by a demon as they spoke.

With a groan, Brad got out of the bed again.

Wilson wagged his tail and barked once quite happily when he saw Brad at the door.

“What do you want?” Brad asked with exasperation.

Sitting up, Wilson stomped on the bed with his front paw while sporting a shit-eating grin.

“Dude, I know you miss Bergy but I can’t sleep in his bed,” Brad reasoned. If digging through Bergy’s closet had a creepiness factor of 3, sleeping in his bed would be a solid thirty. Surely, even Wilson had to see that.

But Wilson didn’t. He only whined and wagged his tail further in a most pitiful state.

“I should take a video of you,” Brad huffed through gritted teeth, “as evidence of blackmail of the highest order.”

He did not take a video, but sighing in defeat, and trying very hard not to think about what he was doing too much, he did go inside.

*

Bergy’s bed was--nice. It was more comfortable than the guest bed, softer than Brad’s own bed back home and it carried a sense of him. A whiff of his cologne. Couple of fallen hairs that were stuck to the pillow. 

This was where his friend fell asleep every night. Brad could see it so well. Bergy stretched diagonally across the bed, cheek plastered to the pillow he was hugging. His mouth hanging open ever so slightly, strands of hair falling onto his forehead, the even rise and fall of his chest in the dark. It was so easy to tweak the image just so too, such that Brad was there next to him--the way Bergy would shift and lean into the touch as Brad wrapped an arm around his middle, two bodies pressed together in the night.

Maybe he should let the team doctor take a look at his chest tomorrow, just in case something was off.

“This is all your fault,” he told Wilson who was lounging on the other pillow.

“And what about it?” Wilson replied smugly with two taps of his tail against the pillow.

*

Did Bergy ever wear his clothes to bed then? Did he fall asleep in Brad’s hoodie or one of his t-shirts? The hoodie was the most comfortable thing Brad ever laid his hands on so he could hardly blame Bergy for stealing it for that purpose. The t-shirts too--Bergy must have had so many that he probably didn’t even notice those two were Brad’s. 

That had to be the explanation.

*

He woke up to a text from Torey.

 _Hey_ , it read, _how is dog sitting going?_

Brad looked at Wilson, who was half buried under the covers and lightly snoring. On Bergy’s bed, where they both spent the night.

 _Wilson is a little monster,_ Brad typed back. _he barks up a storm to make up for his size and he is stubborn as a goat and never gives up on anything._

Not at all the kind of dog you’d expect Bergy to have or like. Brad liked Wilson, but he _almost_ wanted to say Bergy deserved better.

 _Hahah he doesn’t remind me of ANYONE i know at all,_ Torey replied after a moment accompanied by a couple crying laughing emojis.

When Brad asked him what that was supposed to mean, he got no answer.

*

“Why did you adopt Wilson?” he asked Bergy that night on the phone, “why him and not some other dog?”

Try as he did, he couldn’t manage to get the question off his mind the entire day.

“Oh man,” Bergy laughed, “has he been driving you that mad already? I’m sorry.”

Wilson made his way into the camera frame and protested his innocence with yet another bark. Bergy told him to be good to Brad, his voice soft and warm and loving. The thing with dogs was, they always brought out something in men. Talking to humans sometimes felt like shouting across some great chasm made up of insecurities and hurt and norms. You hoped you were loud enough for your voice to carry across and to be more or less heard for what it was. Sometimes it did and sometimes it got swallowed up in the middle.

But pets. There was no gaping chasm with pets, no reason to dress down your love and pretend you cared only a socially acceptable amount, an amount that wouldn’t break you if it got swallowed by a giant chasm.

Bergy had talked to him like that once, his voice perfectly open and warm and loving, when Brad was in the hospital when he said _please hang in there_. But there was so much hurt and fear in it then; it was nothing like this.

God, Brad was seriously jealous of a dog.

“No,” Brad clarified now, trying to rein in his thoughts, “we’ve been getting along. I was just--curious.”

It would be nice if he could move to a small random town, maybe somewhere by the ocean in Maine that had no wi-fi, no hockey, and no feelings.

Bergy’s face softened even further though Brad didn’t know how that was possible.

“I don’t know,” he said, “there was something about him. I saw him in the shelter, he was barking up a storm and I just--knew I had to have him you know. It was like, love on first sight.”

Brad nodded. 

_Love on first sight._

His throat had gone a little dry all of a sudden and he had a sense he was blushing.

“Hey,” Bergy, the ever observant man that he was, asked now, “you okay?”

“Yeah,” Brad forced the word past his dry throat, lying through his teeth. “Just tired I guess.”

*

Over the last couple of years, he had thought about telling Bergy, of course he did. Sometimes he imagined he drove to Bergy’s place in a thunderstorm and confessed his love standing in the rain, at other times it was a quiet conversation in a hotel room on the road, fingers intertwined in each other in the dark. Sometimes they scored the perfect goal together, an overtime winner in a playoff game maybe, and he kissed Bergy giving fuck all for what the world thought. He even thought of Bergy coming to him, Bergy kissing him, that moment when anxiety gives way to euphoria, like sunshine that washes over a city after rain.

But then he would think about everything Bergy was more likely to say.

 _I am flattered_ , he would start with a painful but diplomatic grimace trying at being a smile, _but--_

_I am not into men._

_I like you as a friend._

_Oh Brad,_ he would say at other times, his eyes soft with sorrow, _I feel the same way but we can’t. You know we can’t._ And Brad would nod. Of course he knew.

What he didn’t know was what he would do next. How he would survive that and go on living. 

So. 

He thought about it, sure, but he said nothing.

*

Until tonight.

Sure, Brad could still fold the hoodie now lying on the back of the couch, take it upstairs to Bergy’s closet and act like nothing happened, but at the same time he knew he couldn’t.

It was too much. He needed to know for once and all.

“This is all your fault,” he told Wilson again, who remained unfazed by the accusation and even had the gall to ask for a game of tug-of-war, wagging his tail innocently.

“Bro do you have literally no shame?” Brad asked but he kneeled on the door and picked up the other side of the rope. Wilson growled as he shook the rope in his mouth and tried to wriggle it free.

“You know we are nothing alike,” Brad said, while he pulled and shook from his own end.

If he was being honest, once Torey pointed it out Brad could see how they were kind of alike, this dog and him. But Wilson didn’t need to know that.

The turning of a key in the lock made him freeze where he was.

“I’m home!” Bergy called from the hallway, “you guys missed me?”

The rest of the world long forgotten, Wilson ran to his dad in full speed.

“Alright, alright I missed you too,” he could hear Bergy saying through laughter as Wilson must have nuzzled and licked him all over.

Oh, to be able to lick Bergy at will--Brad pushed down another pang of jealousy. He had more important matters at hand. Which were revealed when--

“Brad?” Bergy walked into living room, sporting the loveliest of smiles and carrying Wilson under his arm.

He frowned in confusion for a second when he saw Brad on his knees on the floor before his eye caught on the hoodie on the back of the couch.

This is it, Brad thought. 

This was when Bergy would say “ohhh what is that doing here?” in surprise and after some digging they would find that Brad forgot the hoodie in his place and Bergy’s cleaning lady washed and folded it with the rest of Bergy’s clothes. Making a stack of Brad’s clothes in the process purely by coincidence.

And Brad would go back to his quiet heartbreak and maybe that broken thing in his chest, the shadow of misplaced hope, would heal in time, or at least scar over.

*

But that was not what happened.

*

“Ah,” Bergy said instead as all color rapidly drained from his face. He put Wilson gently down, all the while keeping his eyes on the hoodie as if it would come alive and attack them if he removed his eyes even for a moment.

“Wilson has a very peculiar understanding of fetch,” Brad explained matter-of-factly. His heart was beating in his ears and he could only barely hear his own voice. “He ran into your closet and threw it on a shelf. On _that_.”

Bergy nodded, frozen in place like a deer caught in headlights. “I, uh, well you must have forgotten it--forgotten it here and Marisa--she must have--”

Brad cut him off. 

“The truth, Bergy.” 

Bergy took in a stuttering breath and exhaled sharply. He crossed the two steps to the couch and slid against its back so he was sitting on the ground with his back against it. Whether it was to be on the same level as Brad or because he didn’t trust his legs to support his weight, Brad didn’t know.

“Okay,” he said. He ran a hand over his face, took in another shaky breath.

“You forgot it here. I knew you were looking for it and I knew the right thing to do was to hand it back. I’m not proud of myself for what I did. I’m sorry and you have a right to be mad.” 

So no convoluted explanation involving misplaced garments and cleaning staff then. 

“Why?”

Bergy petted Wilson absently who was standing by Bergy’s legs, facing Brad. When he smiled, there was something sharp in it, like broken glass.

“Because,” he said, through a hollow chuckle, “I put it on one time and it felt as if you were there next to me and I liked that. Liked it too much to give it up.” 

“In a best friends kind of way or--?”

The moment Brad asked the question, he regretted it. He had told himself he needed to know, but Bergy’s face shattered at the words. He winced like he was struck, his face was white as a sheet--it was a nightmare come to life, one that was shared by all male athletes who were into other men.

“Fuck.” Brad muttered, which was once again really not the right thing to say because Bergy looked like he was going to pass out any moment now.

Wilson growled at him, no trace of playfulness in his voice now, asking _what the fuck are you doing?_

“I mean,” Brad clarified, scrambling for words, “before you answer that you should know that I had this monster crush on you for like ages, so I would very much so prefer if it was in a I want to bang Marchy so bad kinda way and not in a platonic way, but if it is the latter that’s okay too --we will just call it even what with you stealing my clothes. Deal?”

Bergy--well he blinked, once, twice, pinched himself and shook his head, as if he was desperately trying to convince himself this was happening in real life and not in a fever dream.

Brad thought he could give a hand with that. He slid on the floor until he was next to Bergy, put a hand on his chest and pressed a kiss onto his stunned lips.

Bergy’s heart was beating way too fast to be within healthy limits, as if any moment now it was going to stage a coup to escape out of his ribcage. 

After a moment which seemed to drag into eternity Bergy’s lips quirked up in a small smile.

“Fuck,” he exhaled, “I thought--Brad-- _fuck_.”

Fair, Brad thought. That was as much as he could articulate in words right now too, if he tried. 

He laughed. 

In between the anxiety and the uncertainty they had forgotten to be happy. Forgotten to grasp what this meant.

He traced a line across Bergy’s jaw and cheek with his two fingers, because he could.

Bergy laughed too, still too stunned but with some life in him now.

This time he kissed back.

(There was still a conversation to be had of course, about risk, and careers and tradeoffs but Brad thought, man somethings were worth the risk in life. Bergy was worth the risk; he always had been.)

**********  
**EPILOGUE**

Wilson slept happily with his back against two pairs of legs that night. For a while his dad and the Short Annoying One had locked him out of the bedroom and kept him from an epic wrestling match from the sound of it but such was life. Wilson took pride in how he never sook material rewards for his efforts--as long as he was fed, and his belly was scratched and his dad wasn’t away for too long, and someone played fetch with him and took him on long walks he was fine. Oh and toys--toys were important too. 

But even a good boy had limits to his patience. 

For ages, he had watched his dad sigh and even on occasion cry over the Short Annoying One. Wilson watched his dad’s smile falter every time the other human left, watched him wear Short Annoying One’s clothes to bed and exhale like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

 _You have it easy, being a dog,_ his dad would say sometimes, _I don’t know what to do with Brad and hockey_ \--as if he didn’t have Wilson neutered and denied him any female or male life companion (Wilson didn’t like labels) of his own species, but that was a different point entirely. All dads were terrible in one way or another, and yet we loved them despite it.

 _Did you consider talking to him?_ , Wilson asked on multiple occasions, because the Short Annoying One was as subtle as a cat breaking into a butchershop, but being a dog his words only got him treats and belly scratches.

(He had also heard talk on the TV of how if you or a loved one had been diagnosed with mesothelioma you could be entitled to financial compensation. He didn’t know what mesothelioma was but he did wonder if it was something like what he had to go through and whether financial compensation was a very special kind of belly rub, or perhaps a super-tasty treat. Because if so Wilson was definitely entitled to that.)

Anyway, not that he got any reward for it or anything, but he was happy because finally his heroic efforts paid off. And Wilson liked the Short Annoying One, despite him being stubborn as a goat and mouthy as a cat in heat, and he loved how happy he made his dad. 

And most importantly, now there would be two sets of hands around the house to give him belly rubs and go fetch Wilson’s tennis balls.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading friends; I hope it was to your liking. Surely I am forgiven for the heartache I unleashed upon y'all last weekend _and_ may I say deserve some reward because I really wanted to sneak a lot more angst in here as well but then stopped myself. 
> 
> As always if you liked the story please drop me a line; comments are what keep me coming back to write more. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr [@blindbatalex](https://blindbatalex.tumblr.com/) if you want to come and give me a holler. I am slow in responding to prompts but this fic as well as the last two I wrote were all in response to tumblr asks so if you have an idea you want me to write come and yell at me man.


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